Monday, June 26
     Teachers start saving your money, writing grants, begging, embezzling, whatever you need to do, to be able to come to Teacher's College next summer. Admin please, please look for ways that we can send as many people as possible to this incredible learning opportunity. The money you spend will be the gift that keeps on giving. We have only been here one day and have already learned sooo much!
     We started our day at Riverside Church with Lucy Calkins. Wow! Did she ever preach it! I think Megan captured the tone and tenor of the message very well. I just want to add one more quote from Lucy, "Happiness is being part of a community of colleagues working together on something that you feel is meaningful."
     I will be meeting everyday with Lucy for a couple hours. Our first session today was lovely. She talked again about the collaboration of colleagues and how grade levels should be planning the reading/writing year together. I think we do a great job of this in Springdale.  Here are some snippets from her session:

• The teacher's ZEAL is important. Are you digging a hole because you have to or because you are looking for treasure? We communicate our zeal to students when we use phrases such as: we, in this class we..., we are the kind of kids/class who...
• Non negotiables/bottom lines: 
• Kids need to read a lot. 
• an exceptional reader reads ten times more per day than an average reader
• Kids are talking about books everyday
• Explicit instruction in comprehension
• Struggling readers are not all treated the same.
• Every teacher is reading aloud.
• dramatic, not a recording, kids are NOT following along
• NAEP assessment, most kids who are not proficient, can read the passage, but they read too slow. Time isn't the issue- comprehension breaks down when kids read too slow. ( I will share expected rates with you in next PD).

   After lunch I learned from Grace Chough.  Here are two really good ideas she shared:

• Instead of saying, "Turn and talk," say: 
• Turn and compare/contrast___, 
• Turn and sequence/rank __.
• Turn and describe cause/effect___.
• Turn and describe problem/solution ___.
• Beginning of the year: students share their "Reading Identity" by making a timeline of their reading history called, "Books That Matter".  For example my time line might look like this:

_______________________________________________________________________________

Pre-K                                                        3rd grade                                                         5th grade

Grandmother read aloud                             My teacher read aloud                                     The Borrowers 

Gulliver's Travels. I was captivated             Charlie and the Choc. Fact.,                            (hmm... little

by the Lilliputians                                        Charlotte's Web                                                people again?)

                                                                 James and the Giant Peach

                                                                 because of this I became a reader

   My late afternoon session was with Annie Toranto and was all about TEXT COMPLEXITY. Teachers I have some great things to share with about this! You are going to love it!!! One practical scaffolding technique:

• Gather together a group a students who are ready to move to a new text band. This will be a new book club. 
• Model how to notice a particular feature of the next text band. 
• Have purple sticky notes pre-placed in the book you give each student. These sticky notes are placed on pages you know have the particular characteristic you have just demonstrated. The notes have a question already written on them to guide writing about reading.
• Finally, have students use pink sticky notes and place them on pages where they notice the demonstrated characteristic and write about it.

Whew! It was a great day!